Is Donald Trump Robbing The US?

Frankly, when people have said that Trump only ran for president to boost his business, I didn’t agree. I think Donald is genuinely an old, angry, rich, white man who spends far too much time sitting on the couch watching Fox News and getting misinformed. I think he genuinely felt passionately that the country had gone to crap, Obama was the reason, and Fox had the answers — idiotic and often completely false, but I think that’s a bulk of what Trump’s run was about.

I also think a chief concern of Trump’s has been terrorism since 9/11. That could have been Trump Tower, and I think that realization hit Trump very hard. Whereas most of the Americans who fear terrorism attacks are fearing them completely illogically, perhaps Trump has some right to be afraid. If terrorists want to fly into a tall, rich American building that holds symbolic value, why not Trump Tower? So, I think it was that experience and fear that really drove Trump into politics.

But let’s not be mistaken — if Donald has an opportunity to add to his wealth, no matter how unethical it is, he’ll probably do so without much care for anything else. Experts from Republican and Democratic presidential administrations have come out and said that Trump is violating the Constitution by not putting his business in a blind trust — by actually still running it, along with his kids!

But it goes even beyond that. Trump doubled the membership fee (from $100,000 to $200,000) at Mar-A-Lago after being elected president. This is the place he goes every weekend (the “Winter White House” or “Southern White House” as he now calls it), despite saying on the campaign trail that he’d hardly leave the White House if elected (the real White House, of course). This is where he hosts heads of state — which hugely boosts the revenue of his property and business. This is where Secret Service have to stay, and other government staff — which hugely boosts the revenue of his property and business. Getting the picture yet?

Meanwhile, Donald’s wife Melania happily stays in their penthouse in Trump Tower, again protected by Secret Service as racking up a massive bill for the United States and revenue for Trump’s business.

Over 8 years, it’s reported that Obama’s vacations cost the US $97 million. Trump has cost the United States a quarter of that ($24 million) in just 10 weeks of vacations or weekend getaways to Florida! If the trend continues, that means Trump will cost the United States over $499 million on vacations alone.

Frankly, many of the cuts to US services and governance that Trump has proposed could be kept if Trump would just stop taking vacations. But these vacations heavily pad the bank accounts of his company. He could make hundreds of millions of dollars on US taxpayers alone from his vacations. And that’s not even counting the travel of his kids, or how much money foreign leaders will spend staying at Mar-A-Lago, Trump Tower, Trump’s new DC hotel, etc.

Yes, Trump is making a ton of money for his family business — while his family is running the government and he’s proposing to dramatically cut domestic government spending on the rest of the country — and much of that newfound revenue is coming straight from American taxpayers.

Recognize that Trump has been sued for fraud, for stealing money from people, for not paying workers, and for other things hundreds of times over the past few decades. He recently settled a lawsuit against Trump University for defrauding “students” for a total payout of $25 million — despite the fact that Trump says you should never settle.

What are Trump voters getting for electing Trump? Honestly, think about it.

Did Trump run for president to rob the United States of America? I don’t think so. Is Trump robbing the US anyway? I think that’s completely obvious.

Zach is the director of CleanTechnica, the most popular cleantech-focused website in the world, and Planetsave, a world-leading green and science news site. He has been covering green news of various sorts since 2008, and he has been especially focused on solar energy, electric vehicles, and wind energy since 2009.
Aside from his work on CleanTechnica and Planetsave, he's the founder and director of Solar Love, EV Obsession, and Bikocity.
To connect with Zach on some of your favorite social networks, go to ZacharyShahan.com and click on the relevant buttons.

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